@ShadowTheBurningWizard I mean, that's just not feasible. At least here, most places require a months notice from both parties. But being sacked means, 99/100 times, you'll be paid for the remaining month and be told not to come in anymore
I wanted to congratulate Mad Scientist on crossing 150k. However, considering his changed username and other circumstances (like their recent post), I'm not sure whether they are in the mood for celebration.
@jscs Yeah, I was more implying that there'd be no community at all :). Currently, more than half the SO flags are auto flags on comments. There's been quite a drop in flags from the people who used to be prolific flaggers
Yahoo Answers still hasn't died after 15 years. As bad as it is, it's gonna take a lot more than the current rate of kudzu, for a long time, to stop people from showing up and posting on SO.
@ert typically for pivotal employees they’ll negotiate a departure.
Saying “look, we want to make a strategic change, let’s negotiate your departure”. C levels and VPs that are good negotiators have these agreements in place when they join.
The part that bothers me is that they should have negotiated shog’s departure. That they didn’t is far more worrying than anything else
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(Negotiates departures include timed transition, severance, and public well wishing)
@JourneymanGeek It's very difficult to locate (define?) "moderators" at Area 51 (because there's no "Moderators" tab), but I think we have three (at least) that have been active in the last month or two. A51 (or a replacement) is an essential mechanism for creating new sites.
user168476
@JourneymanGeek oh I didn't mean that this was a partial blow, I mean today was partially about killing A51 and not just getting rid of people.
@HDE226868 I downvoted the post you just deleted. My comment was going to be: “I admire your hope and optimism. I can only think of Maya Angelou’s quote: “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
@GeorgeStocker I think it's a case of the definition of insanity: It didn't work last time, and likely won't work next time, but maybe if I keep saying it it'll work. And it's never true - maybe that betrays some naivete on my end.
Building a community is hard. Building a healthy one is much harder, but hardest of all is rebuilding a community that was once thriving which has undergone turmoil.
The amazing thing, @JasonAller, is that, at least on Stack Exchange, it's not even that hard. The Our community is so incredibly resilient that, for a long time, the company could do any stupid thing it wanted, and people would just keep on doing what they'd always done: making this place one of the best, highest-quality sites on the Internet.
@CodyGray during a meetup a few years ago, an internal employee said that SO was losing community trust and that they only had a few years to fix it before they had a major problem. That employee left shortly thereafter but her prediction was spot on.
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This was relayed to me by another departed employee
I want to say it was given in 2014? I can’t remember
The point is that you’re spot on. Because the product is good, and because the community tends to run itself, that gave SO a lot of room to mess up. They’ve squandered that
Yeah. Up until today, I wasn't even convinced that it was too late.
I mean, the damage was irreparable. People were lost for good. But the site could still continue with such a direction that it would continue to be a useful force well into the future.
@CodyGray I'm not sure I agree that it wasn't even that hard. I think there were people who put in a lot of work, from both the community, the moderators, and the developers. They made some of it look effortless, but there was a lot of effort put in.
Oh. Yeah. Some of us did work pretty hard. Didn't mean to deny credit where it is due. I was referring to your last statement regarding "rebuilding" the community once it has been built.
It would not have been that hard to rebuild SO/SE, precisely because of the amount of work that was put in early on by so many.
I'm trying to envision ways in which trust could be rebuilt. I see that as a very hard task, that got harder today.
I'd like to get back to trying to formulate a suggestion about changing the current moderation tools from a select one reason, to a select multiple applicable areas for improvement and have that build a more customized comment. I've long thought that making it easier to leave constructive feedback would go a long way to being more welcoming.
I'll relay what I said earlier; SE doesn't deserve a 27th chance. Why brainstorm on their behalf? Let them dig themselves out of their own grave, should they choose to actually course-correct
I don't know if it's just because emotions are hot, but I don't trust SE with anything long-term. At this point, I feel like we should be backing a community-led project, take the power away from the people causing the problems.
I'm trying to think if I've ever seen moderation by GitHub itself in repo issues, or about repos in general. Have you seen examples of that in the past?
I'd also wonder how that changed with their acquisition by Microsoft. I know there was a lot of community concern about that change and what it meant for the future.
Github has only improved since MS bought it. They probably already had the same roadmap, but it's been executed. I think a Q&A platform would be a great fit with the direction its going, but that could bloat it up too, so I dunno. Just an idea.
If that was mostly incoherent, I'm not sober, so I apologize lol
I'm rereading their terms of service: "We do not pre-screen User-Generated Content, but we have the right (though not the obligation) to refuse or remove any User-Generated Content that, in our sole discretion, violates any GitHub terms or policies."
You do quite well when you are not sober, @ndugger. I'm a pretty harsh critic of these things, and everything you said made sense to me. Not sure I agree with it yet, but it was fully coherent.
@JasonAller Putting aside whether or not it makes sense to be trying to brainstorm ideas for SE, this would not be an especially useful feature. Moderators do not want or need to have users selecting multiple reasons. That would just waste time on both ends.
I'm thinking of those new users who ask questions that have multiple areas for improvement. An example would be "What is the best library to add to X to do Y" which has two things that need improvement, not asking for something best, because that is opinion based, and not asking for an external resource (which is probably the more important thing).
If they only get feedback on one of the two issues it sets them up to fail when they go to ask their second question, if they ever ask a second question.
Shog was one of the most delightful people I've ever worked with. Even if calling him "delightful" to his face might get me a scoff and a "Me? Delightful. Well, let me tell you a story ..." :P
@JourneymanGeek Yes, exactly that. That is why I am so shocked, and scared. There's no one left in any comparable role with his depth of knowledge and capability.
@MeganRisdal what hurts the most is the people we lost (granted you had the best reason) are the folks I feel have been reflecting what got us this far
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I'm down to 3 members of staff I actually think get it.
Said differently: I'm running out of people to put trust in. All of my canaries are dying.
I used to be able to think, well, I don't fully understand the motivations for this at this time, and from my outsider perspective, it doesn't look like a good idea, but this person whom I highly trust is on-board with it, so I'm going to hope for the best.
Not sure I agree with that. Just because it's been a decade doesn't automatically mean it's time to give up or jump ship.
It's more like, after a year of this silliness and banging my head on the wall hoping for a different result, maybe it's time to find somewhere else or something else to do.
Shog is the one who sold me on increasing reputation gain from question upvotes being a good idea. I was originally very opposed to it, like most of the SO community.
I actually took a leave immediately after starting so I could take some time off. I start work again next week. Just been vacationing in Hawaii which has been nice but pretty windy / rainy.
Software is eating the world, but what’s on the menu for dessert?
This week we chat about the best way for engineers to give feedback to executives. Paul explains the Purple room method they use at Postlight. Sara references Zero to One and why engineers and marketers have so much trouble communicating.
As a member of a marketing department , it’s true our job is to see the glass as half full. But sometimes the point of the exercise is to be aspirational. Police learn how to be suspicious, marketers learn how to sell, and engineers look for what’s broken so they can fix it. …
I have to set up accounts and all that nonsense on every single site just to be able to flag. Far too much work, and I don't want accounts on every site.
The tooling suggests strongly that I should just do nothing, so that's what I do.
bug status-bydesign
Questions closed as "off-site resource request" do not show the reason they were closed. They say only "off-topic".
Link to example question
Image of question with post notice that says only "off-topic":
SE API query: To verify the close reason, look at the description i...
@CodyGray I don't think Yaakov particularly got the purpose of that report; it seems to me that he initially mistook it for the usual "low rep, I can't see it" and declined it without reading it completely thoroughly. Since he anyway requested a new discussion venue, let's provide one and re-raise it.
@CodyGray I'm not that much of a SO user, you're more experienced at it than me. You go ahead and file it; I might edit it but I'm not experienced enough to file it and own it IMO.
@CodyGray I have SE and Meta experience mostly; read my main site bio
Also, um, there's a link in SOCVR directing users who want to talk about the Shog situation here. I think this might raise too much drama here; to Tavern regulars: is it OK if we keep that link, or should we remove it?
So, instead of learning the site scope in advance, I'm forced to take a guess based on the one actually relevant page in help center - if I even know it exists - and if I get it wrong, I'm screwed?
@CodyGray ah, yes. One site welcomingly says my question is on-topic on the other site, the other site says it's on-topic on the first one. Neither bears any responsibility when I get Q-banned on both.
I assume the pupper is referring to everyone who questioned why in the world Monica would ever want to be reinstated by a company who treated her the way they did?
I don't know the exact reasons, but as I said earlier, I wasn't surprised by this. Saddened, yes. But I didn't expect Shog to make it to the end of 2020 at this company.
Even if you're bull-headed and committed to doubling down on their new policies, which they apparently are, you absolutely don't fire the one guy who can effectively liaise between you and a very vocal community.
@ert I'm not, even. Even putting myself in their shoes, and bull-headedly wanting to drive this stuff through with no compromises, I'd still want a Shog on my team to placate the "opposition".
@CodyGray I'm having a really hard time figuring this out, personally. But I've seen just enough situations where that's happened that I know something is going on that makes complete sense to someone completely different than me.
Firing Shog as a moderator? Sure, I could totally understand that. It's why I think my days are numbered. But...he was an employee. Technically, he had to toe the company line. And from a company perspective, given his other talents and the respect that he commanded, that was invaluable.
@CodyGray I wouldn't have been surprised at Shog quitting. Shog getting fired wasn't even on my radar when thinking about the next dumb thing SE might do
@ert Shog doesn't mince his words; he passes them through a Vollrath grinder with a carefully-chosen grinding plate, mixes them by hand with the finest herbs and spices and the proper amount of salt, packs them into casings, puts them in the smokehouse for a day or two, grills them up, and then invites you to top them with your favorite condiments on homemade buns.
bug status-bydesign
Questions closed as "off-site resource request" do not show the reason they were closed. They say only "off-topic".
Link to example question
Image of question with post notice that says only "off-topic":
SE API query: To verify the close reason, look at the description i...
